The vibrational behavior and the molecular dynamics of the high Tc superconductor Ba0.6K0.4BiO3 have been studied experimentally and by atomistic computer simulation methods. For Ba0.6K0.4BiO3, the vibrational spectrum is dominated by oxygen ion modes from 150cm-1 to 820cm-1 including infrared absorption bands at 330, 480, 640 and 830cm-1including infrared absorption bands at 330, 480, 640 and 830cm-1at room temperature. Band assignments are discussed in relation to those bands predicted by simulations, and the infrared and Raman measurements reported in the literature.

The grain size effect on grain boyndary cracking in Pb-Sn eutectic during isothermal fatigue was investigated. Fatigue experiments were confined to two conditions : (1) 0.4% total strain range(approximetely 0.2% plastic strain range), 1.6710/s frequency; and (2) 1.5% total strain rante(approximately 1.2% plastic strain range), 8.3310/s frequency. Fatigue specimens were cross-sectioned to monitor the depth of crack growth continuosly and then, the maximum crack depths in units of the number of boundaries were plotted as functions of number of cycles for these two different strain ranges. The results revealed that the rate of crack growth(per cycle at fixed rate of crosshead motion) can be expressed as dc/dN=()c where n is typically 2, c is the crack length, is the plastic strain range, and A is a "constant" that depends on whether the crack is deeper or shallower than its first triple point of the grain boundary, A decrdases by about a factor of three after the crack hits the first triple point, indecating that the fatigue crack is trapped at the triple point of the grain boundaries.

The double sided buried contact(DSBC)silicon solar cell processing requires doping of the rear and front grooves with boron and phosphorus respectively. The successful electroless plating of these grooves with the appropriate metals haave been found to depend on the boron conditions for the rear fingers. However, an increased understanding of electroless plating has removed this restriction. Thus the DSBC cells using different boron conditions can be electrolessly plated with ease. This paper presents the recent work done on metallizing the double sided buried contact silicon solar cells with heavily doped boron grooves. The cells results indicate that, the heavier the boron grooves, the poorer the cell performance because of the probable higher metal contact recombination associated with boron grooves.

The zirconia-alumina composite, a low loss material, was sucessfully sintered using a 2.45 GHz microwave radiation. The dense zirconia was used as a microware coupling aid. The effect of microwave power level on the heating rates of samples and the feasibility of microwave energy use in processign ceramec materials were obtained. It was also obtained how to accurately measure the temperature. According to the microwave heating theory, heating mechanisms were discussed.